The Gods Of Mars (20 page)

The lure of the swords within the guard-house was strong upon me, and I
hesitated a moment, half inclined to risk the attempt to take the few
we needed. That he who hesitates is lost proved itself a true aphorism
in this instance, for another moment saw me creeping stealthily toward
the door of the guard-house.

Gently I pressed it open a crack; enough to discover a dozen blacks
stretched upon their silks in profound slumber. At the far side of the
room a rack held the swords and firearms of the men. Warily I pushed
the door a trifle wider to admit my body. A hinge gave out a resentful
groan. One of the men stirred, and my heart stood still. I cursed
myself for a fool to have thus jeopardized our chances for escape; but
there was nothing for it now but to see the adventure through.

With a spring as swift and as noiseless as a tiger’s I lit beside the
guardsman who had moved. My hands hovered about his throat awaiting
the moment that his eyes should open. For what seemed an eternity to
my overwrought nerves I remained poised thus. Then the fellow turned
again upon his side and resumed the even respiration of deep slumber.

Carefully I picked my way between and over the soldiers until I had
gained the rack at the far side of the room. Here I turned to survey
the sleeping men. All were quiet. Their regular breathing rose and
fell in a soothing rhythm that seemed to me the sweetest music I ever
had heard.

Gingerly I drew a long-sword from the rack. The scraping of the
scabbard against its holder as I withdrew it sounded like the filing of
cast iron with a great rasp, and I looked to see the room immediately
filled with alarmed and attacking guardsmen. But none stirred.

The second sword I withdrew noiselessly, but the third clanked in its
scabbard with a frightful din. I knew that it must awaken some of the
men at least, and was on the point of forestalling their attack by a
rapid charge for the doorway, when again, to my intense surprise, not a
black moved. Either they were wondrous heavy sleepers or else the
noises that I made were really much less than they seemed to me.

I was about to leave the rack when my attention was attracted by the
revolvers. I knew that I could not carry more than one away with me,
for I was already too heavily laden to move quietly with any degree of
safety or speed. As I took one of them from its pin my eye fell for
the first time on an open window beside the rack. Ah, here was a
splendid means of escape, for it let directly upon the dock, not twenty
feet from the water’s edge.

And as I congratulated myself, I heard the door opposite me open, and
there looking me full in the face stood the officer of the guard. He
evidently took in the situation at a glance and appreciated the gravity
of it as quickly as I, for our revolvers came up simultaneously and the
sounds of the two reports were as one as we touched the buttons on the
grips that exploded the cartridges.

I felt the wind of his bullet as it whizzed past my ear, and at the
same instant I saw him crumple to the ground. Where I hit him I do not
know, nor if I killed him, for scarce had he started to collapse when I
was through the window at my rear. In another second the waters of
Omean closed above my head, and the three of us were making for the
little flier a hundred yards away.

Xodar was burdened with the boy, and I with the three long-swords. The
revolver I had dropped, so that while we were both strong swimmers it
seemed to me that we moved at a snail’s pace through the water. I was
swimming entirely beneath the surface, but Xodar was compelled to rise
often to let the youth breathe, so it was a wonder that we were not
discovered long before we were.

In fact we reached the boat’s side and were all aboard before the watch
upon the battleship, aroused by the shots, detected us. Then an alarm
gun bellowed from a ship’s bow, its deep boom reverberating in
deafening tones beneath the rocky dome of Omean.

Instantly the sleeping thousands were awake. The decks of a thousand
monster craft teemed with fighting-men, for an alarm on Omean was a
thing of rare occurrence.

We cast away before the sound of the first gun had died, and another
second saw us rising swiftly from the surface of the sea. I lay at
full length along the deck with the levers and buttons of control
before me. Xodar and the boy were stretched directly behind me, prone
also that we might offer as little resistance to the air as possible.

“Rise high,” whispered Xodar. “They dare not fire their heavy guns
toward the dome—the fragments of the shells would drop back among
their own craft. If we are high enough our keel plates will protect us
from rifle fire.”

I did as he bade. Below us we could see the men leaping into the water
by hundreds, and striking out for the small cruisers and one-man fliers
that lay moored about the big ships. The larger craft were getting
under way, following us rapidly, but not rising from the water.

“A little to your right,” cried Xodar, for there are no points of
compass upon Omean where every direction is due north.

The pandemonium that had broken out below us was deafening. Rifles
cracked, officers shouted orders, men yelled directions to one another
from the water and from the decks of myriad boats, while through all
ran the purr of countless propellers cutting water and air.

I had not dared pull my speed lever to the highest for fear of
overrunning the mouth of the shaft that passed from Omean’s dome to the
world above, but even so we were hitting a clip that I doubt has ever
been equalled on the windless sea.

The smaller fliers were commencing to rise toward us when Xodar
shouted: “The shaft! The shaft! Dead ahead,” and I saw the opening,
black and yawning in the glowing dome of this underworld.

A ten-man cruiser was rising directly in front to cut off our escape.
It was the only vessel that stood in our way, but at the rate that it
was traveling it would come between us and the shaft in plenty of time
to thwart our plans.

It was rising at an angle of about forty-five degrees dead ahead of us,
with the evident intention of combing us with grappling hooks from
above as it skimmed low over our deck.

There was but one forlorn hope for us, and I took it. It was useless
to try to pass over her, for that would have allowed her to force us
against the rocky dome above, and we were already too near that as it
was. To have attempted to dive below her would have put us entirely at
her mercy, and precisely where she wanted us. On either side a hundred
other menacing craft were hastening toward us. The alternative was
filled with risk—in fact it was all risk, with but a slender chance of
success.

As we neared the cruiser I rose as though to pass above her, so that
she would do just what she did do, rise at a steeper angle to force me
still higher. Then as we were almost upon her I yelled to my
companions to hold tight, and throwing the little vessel into her
highest speed I deflected her bows at the same instant until we were
running horizontally and at terrific velocity straight for the
cruiser’s keel.

Her commander may have seen my intentions then, but it was too late.
Almost at the instant of impact I turned my bows upward, and then with
a shattering jolt we were in collision. What I had hoped for happened.
The cruiser, already tilted at a perilous angle, was carried completely
over backward by the impact of my smaller vessel. Her crew fell
twisting and screaming through the air to the water far below, while
the cruiser, her propellers still madly churning, dived swiftly
headforemost after them to the bottom of the Sea of Omean.

The collision crushed our steel bows, and notwithstanding every effort
on our part came near to hurling us from the deck. As it was we landed
in a wildly clutching heap at the very extremity of the flier, where
Xodar and I succeeded in grasping the hand-rail, but the boy would have
plunged overboard had I not fortunately grasped his ankle as he was
already partially over.

Unguided, our vessel careened wildly in its mad flight, rising ever
nearer the rocks above. It took but an instant, however, for me to
regain the levers, and with the roof barely fifty feet above I turned
her nose once more into the horizontal plane and headed her again for
the black mouth of the shaft.

The collision had retarded our progress and now a hundred swift scouts
were close upon us. Xodar had told me that ascending the shaft by
virtue of our repulsive rays alone would give our enemies their best
chance to overtake us, since our propellers would be idle and in rising
we would be outclassed by many of our pursuers. The swifter craft are
seldom equipped with large buoyancy tanks, since the added bulk of them
tends to reduce a vessel’s speed.

As many boats were now quite close to us it was inevitable that we
would be quickly overhauled in the shaft, and captured or killed in
short order.

To me there always seems a way to gain the opposite side of an
obstacle. If one cannot pass over it, or below it, or around it, why
then there is but a single alternative left, and that is to pass
through it. I could not get around the fact that many of these other
boats could rise faster than ours by the fact of their greater
buoyancy, but I was none the less determined to reach the outer world
far in advance of them or die a death of my own choosing in event of
failure.

“Reverse?” screamed Xodar, behind me. “For the love of your first
ancestor, reverse. We are at the shaft.”

“Hold tight!” I screamed in reply. “Grasp the boy and hold tight—we
are going straight up the shaft.”

The words were scarce out of my mouth as we swept beneath the
pitch-black opening. I threw the bow hard up, dragged the speed lever
to its last notch, and clutching a stanchion with one hand and the
steering-wheel with the other hung on like grim death and consigned my
soul to its author.

I heard a little exclamation of surprise from Xodar, followed by a grim
laugh. The boy laughed too and said something which I could not catch
for the whistling of the wind of our awful speed.

I looked above my head, hoping to catch the gleam of stars by which I
could direct our course and hold the hurtling thing that bore us true
to the centre of the shaft. To have touched the side at the speed we
were making would doubtless have resulted in instant death for us all.
But not a star showed above—only utter and impenetrable darkness.

Then I glanced below me, and there I saw a rapidly diminishing circle
of light—the mouth of the opening above the phosphorescent radiance of
Omean. By this I steered, endeavouring to keep the circle of light
below me ever perfect. At best it was but a slender cord that held us
from destruction, and I think that I steered that night more by
intuition and blind faith than by skill or reason.

We were not long in the shaft, and possibly the very fact of our
enormous speed saved us, for evidently we started in the right
direction and so quickly were we out again that we had no time to alter
our course. Omean lies perhaps two miles below the surface crust of
Mars. Our speed must have approximated two hundred miles an hour, for
Martian fliers are swift, so that at most we were in the shaft not over
forty seconds.

We must have been out of it for some seconds before I realised that we
had accomplished the impossible. Black darkness enshrouded all about
us. There were neither moons nor stars. Never before had I seen such
a thing upon Mars, and for the moment I was nonplussed. Then the
explanation came to me. It was summer at the south pole. The ice cap
was melting and those meteoric phenomena, clouds, unknown upon the
greater part of Barsoom, were shutting out the light of heaven from
this portion of the planet.

Fortunate indeed it was for us, nor did it take me long to grasp the
opportunity for escape which this happy condition offered us. Keeping
the boat’s nose at a stiff angle I raced her for the impenetrable
curtain which Nature had hung above this dying world to shut us out
from the sight of our pursuing enemies.

We plunged through the cold camp fog without diminishing our speed, and
in a moment emerged into the glorious light of the two moons and the
million stars. I dropped into a horizontal course and headed due
north. Our enemies were a good half-hour behind us with no conception
of our direction. We had performed the miraculous and come through a
thousand dangers unscathed—we had escaped from the land of the First
Born. No other prisoners in all the ages of Barsoom had done this
thing, and now as I looked back upon it it did not seem to have been so
difficult after all.

I said as much to Xodar, over my shoulder.

“It is very wonderful, nevertheless,” he replied. “No one else could
have accomplished it but John Carter.”

At the sound of that name the boy jumped to his feet.

“John Carter!” he cried. “John Carter! Why, man, John Carter, Prince
of Helium, has been dead for years. I am his son.”

My son! I could not believe my ears. Slowly I rose and faced the
handsome youth. Now that I looked at him closely I commenced to see
why his face and personality had attracted me so strongly. There was
much of his mother’s incomparable beauty in his clear-cut features, but
it was strongly masculine beauty, and his grey eyes and the expression
of them were mine.

The boy stood facing me, half hope and half uncertainty in his look.

“Tell me of your mother,” I said. “Tell me all you can of the years
that I have been robbed by a relentless fate of her dear companionship.”

With a cry of pleasure he sprang toward me and threw his arms about my
neck, and for a brief moment as I held my boy close to me the tears
welled to my eyes and I was like to have choked after the manner of
some maudlin fool—but I do not regret it, nor am I ashamed. A long
life has taught me that a man may seem weak where women and children
are concerned and yet be anything but a weakling in the sterner avenues
of life.